Turkey should look to its own brutal treatment of journalists

Public intellectual Osman Kavala was arrested a year ago by Turkish authorities and has still to be charged with an offence.
Photograph: AP

Five months ago, I wrote of Osman Kavala, a Turkish public intellectual arrested by the Turkish authorities. He has now spent a year behind bars and has still to be charged with an offence.

Kavala is, in the eyes of the Turkish government, a troublemaker because he has played a prominent role both in defending the rights and liberties of all people in Turkey and in bringing together people of different political viewpoints to discuss their beliefs in civil debate. In Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, nurturing open dialogue is regarded as a threat.

There has been much attention on Turkey over the past two weeks because of the gruesome fate of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. Turkey has provided a drip-feed of information about the journalist’s death, leading to Riyadh’s admission that he died in its consulate. While Khashoggi’s death has helped reveal the brutal reality of Saudi Arabia’s “reforms”, Kavala’s continued detention exposes Turkey’s treatment of its own dissidents. The scale of repression is shocking. Since a state of emergency was imposed after the failed coup of July 2016, Turkish authorities have detained more than 142,000 people.

'Suffocating climate of fear' in Turkey despite end of state of emergency

Read more

Almost 200 media outlets have been shut down and at least 319 journalists arrested. Of all journalists arrested worldwide in 2017, almost a third were in Turkey. Earlier this month, a Turkish court of appeal upheld the sentences of life in prison without parole handed to four prominent Turkish journalists for their alleged links to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based cleric whom Turkey accuses of being behind the attempted coup.

As Kavala begins his second year imprisoned without charge, we need to shine a light not just on Saudi brutality, but on that of Turkey too.